


walking me across a fragile line (and comfort's calling late)

by AndroidPalindrome



Series: take your whole life then you put a line through it [2]
Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I, Dark Souls III
Genre: (I feel like I have to mention that every time because fandoms), (a.k.a. will be expanded into a chapter fic once the first story is complete), (kind of), Attempted Sex, Consent Issues, Emotional Roller Coaster, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Gwynevere is Not the Queen of Lothric, Healthy Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, In Medias Res, M/M, No Incest, Overstimulation, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, teaser fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 16:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndroidPalindrome/pseuds/AndroidPalindrome
Summary: " He could see the dust motes floating around the elder prince, making his dark blue tunic and black pants look so unbelievably soft, and he was so sturdy and statuesque that, really, how could Gwyndolin have helped himself?"Almost a year into the future--after the Battle for Irithyll is won and the dust has finally settled--Lorian and Gwyndolin have settled into a relationship that is sweeter and softer than anything they could have dreamed. It's only natural, then, that they take that 'final step' that everyone seems to expect in romance.Things go as planned...until they don't.(Takes place after "Throw Stars at the Twilight", but does not spoil the major components of said story (other than the obvious conclusion), and can be read as a stand-alone as long as one is willing to suspend a lot of disbelief.)





	walking me across a fragile line (and comfort's calling late)

Gwyndolin was not quite sure what had come over him in that moment, though it was easy to suspect that it was because of how _strong_ his dearest Lorian was--how brave and tall and clever and _kind_ , so very kind. Lorian had been in the middle of reading a report on unusual Hollow activity on the western border of the Sunless Realms, but Gwyndolin found himself completely and utterly distracted by the way the sunset made Lorian’s hair glow molten silver and gave his warm brown eyes an almost burnt orange tint. He could see the dust motes floating around the elder prince, making his dark blue tunic and black pants look so unbelievably _soft_ , and he was so sturdy and statuesque that, really, how could Gwyndolin have helped himself?

  
  
One moment, Lorian was trying to twist his tongue around a stubborn word, and then the papers he was struggling to read were dropped to the floor as he found himself with an armful of True God. The knight didn’t even have time to make a noise of surprise before Gwyndolin’s lips--cool and tender as always--were on his own with a _drive_ that the god had never before shown, and Lorian suddenly found himself adrift and helpless in a tide of what could only be described as _want_. His eyes fluttered closed and his arms tightened around Gwyndolin’s back as the snakes curled around his legs and squeezed in that particular way of theirs when the god could no longer contain himself.

Lorian groaned, feeling far too loved and far too hot and far too dazed to do anything but mould his mouth against the god’s and hold on for dear life, as if Gwyndolin was a lone buoy in a raging storm that had formed out of nowhere on a crystal clear day. The knight expected Gwyndolin to pull back at some point, but if anything, the Nameless Moon grew more insistent with his affections. The snakes tightened to just before the border of pain, and that thin, smooth mouth pressed and pressed and pressed and _pressed._

When Lorian pulled his lips away from Gwyndolin’s just enough to ask what had come over him, the god chased his mouth before he could form a single world, and the knight’s mind fizzled and popped as a tongue slid into his mouth.

_Oh._

**_Oh._ **

Gwyndolin had never kissed Lorian like that before--as if the man were a glass of fresh water after days of dehydration--and the elder prince’s eyelids fluttered as a wave of lightheadedness the likes of which he never felt before drenched every nook and cranny of his brain. His legs began to tremble and shake, and while it felt good (and it felt so very good, so good, _so good, oh Gwyndolin, please, never stop_ ), the floor began to sway and rock underneath him and oh, he was so very dizzy. He had never felt that dizzy before. Was he going to faint? On Gwyndolin? He’d crush him!

Before Lorian could gather enough of his wits together and stop whatever was happening long enough for the world to stop whirling, the distinct sensation of the snakes unwinding broke through his fog-drenched brain, and suddenly Gwyndolin let go of him, placed his hands square in the center of his chest, and _pushed._ As unbalanced as he was, the gentle yet insistant shove was all that was required to send Lorian toppling backwards, and as his woozy mind struggled to keep pace with the situation, the knight found himself lying on Gwyndolin’s bed, and he could feel the snakes wrap around his thighs and his waist, and _oh_

_Oh_

_This was_

Lorian’s eyes popped open, and he stared up at Gwyndolin with a sluggish sort of wonder as the god seemed to loom over him, even though he was only ‘straddling’ his waist. Gwyndolin’s serpentine pupils had widened to a diameter that almost made them appear ‘normal’, his pale cheeks flushed as if he had just run from the very top of Anor Londo and back, and that _smile_ on his face! It was dripping with so much love and admiration and playfulness and _need_ that it sent Lorian’s body shivering. It felt, in a way, similar to the sensation of heatstroke.

_The youngest child of the sun indeed._

“ Oh, Lorian, I _love thee.”_ Gwyndolin was panting lightly--his arms trembling minutely from where they were braced around Lorian’s head--and the elder prince couldn’t keep the dopey and besotted smile from his own lips. “ I love thee in a way that I never thought I would love another. I _adore_ thee. I want to melt and blend into thee until we can no longer discern where one of us begins and the other ends.”

  
  
“ Gwyndolin,” was all Lorian could say, more of a breath than a word. His arms reached up and clutched tightly to Gwyndolin’s forearms, and oh, he was still so very dizzy--he doubted he would be able to take a step without toppling over, let alone stand up--but Gwyndolin was so safe and sturdy and cool.“ I love you...I love you so. You are…” Was he slurring? He must be hearing things. “ You are the only sun I will ever need...the sun I have been seeking my...my whole...my life.”

“ Dearest Lorian.” Lorian’s somewhat disjointed answer seemed to have knocked the breath out of the Nameless Moon, and those thin lips were suddenly on Lorian’s lips once more, and then on his cheekbones, and then kissing and _nipping_ along the strong line of his jaw, and then down his neck, and Lorian didn’t know what to think. He _couldn’t_ think, not really, and 

Oh

...he didn’t like that, he didn’t like that one bit, but he loved Gwyndolin so desperately, and his actions felt like something that should feel so very nice, so Lorian closed his eyes and whimpered under the onslaught of Gwyndolin’s lilac scent and burning touch and wet lips and let his hands slip from Gwyndolin’s arms and fall onto the bedspread as the god slid down his body.

_I just need a moment._ The thought was slow and sticky, as if it had been soaked in molasses, and Lorian’s trembling increased. _I can’t keep up. You are running so far ahead of me. Please, Gwyndolin, just...stop. Stop for one moment. Let me catch my breath. I love you but I’m having trouble thinking._

Gwyndolin, too busy running his lips along the bit of Lorian’s collarbone that peeked through the wide collar of his tunic, did not stop. How could he? Gwyndolin had many powers, but telepathy was not one of them, and Lorian could not expect him to stop unless he _said something_ , for Flame’s sake. So he opened his mouth, but his tongue flopped about like a wet sack of grain, and his words spun along with the room, and his heart rate spiked once he realized that he _couldn’t_ say anything. He couldn’t ask Gwyndolin to stop. His palms began to sweat from where they laid limply on the duvet cover.

Gwyndolin shifted, and _oh_ , maybe he _could_ read minds. Those lips lifted off of his collarbone, and there was a second where Lorian could finally fill his lungs, but the air seemed to be sucked right back out of him the moment he felt Gwyndolin’s hands slide under his shirt.

_I’m...I’m_ **_scared_ ** _._

The Nameless Moon was so many wonderful, terrible, _beautiful_ things, but he could not read minds, so it was not surprising when Lorian’s distress was heard only by himself. Those thin, silky hands smoothed over his abdomen and ran over his sides and then swept down his chest, and Lorian felt like he was going to faint, but he _couldn’t._ He couldn’t do _anything._

_I’m sinking._

Lorian tried to shout. He even tried to scream. The impulse was there, the desire, the _desperation_ , but his tongue hung heavy in his mouth like lead and his lips would not listen to his brain. He could push Gwyndolin off (and Gwyndolin would understand once he knew what was happening, of that Lorian was certain. He would _never_ want to hurt or scare or overwhelm Lorian if he could help it. He loved him, and theirs was such tender and considerate love--the kind of love that people were supposed to share), but his arms seemed to be disconnected from his body, and his legs seemed to fuzz and phase in and out of existence, and even his weakest attempt at moving his head sent it reeling all the more uncontrollably, and--

And--

_I can’t keep my head above water._

Gwyndolin swept his tongue down Lorian’s stomach to his navel. Tears welled up and pushed against Lorian’s closed eyelids.

_Please stop._

Lorian was paralyzed, nauseous, overwhelmed to the point of numbness, functionally mute, and he was sure that, under any other set of circumstances, those hands stroking against his sides would have felt so nice--would have felt like the kiss felt when it first started--but the touch only seemed to make the knight’s organs squeeze in panic and bile drip into the bottom of his throat.

_No, Gwyndolin, no--_

Those hands left his sides, undid the buckle of his belt--

_Please stop!_

\--grabbed the button of his pants--

**_Gwyndolin!_ **

\--and stopped. They seemed to freeze on the fastener, and there was _nothing_ , and Lorian was too addled to properly gauge how long, but his lungs finally felt like they were filling with air and he could breathe again, and the spinning began to slow, and…

“...Lorian?”

Gwyndolin’s voice was _frightened._ Cracking. Horrified. And it was only then that Lorian realized that the reason he was still shaking was because he had started crying in the midst of his blind panic.

“ Oh...oh, Flame and Dark, _Lorian_ …” Gwyndolin’s hands returned, but they were on his face this time, his tremulous thumbs trying vainly to sweep away the moisture dripping down Lorian’s cheeks and temples and dampening his hair and the comforter beneath him. _“_ Art...art thou...have I...have I _hurt_ thee?”

Finally, _finally,_ Lorian could muster enough wherewithal to open his eyes, and Gwyndolin was leaning over him (not nearly as looming as before, which was impossible, since it was not as if his size and body shape had changed in the heat of the moment), and his face was so _stricken_ , so _alarmed_ in a way that the knight had not witnessed since the Sulyvahn affair, that all it took was their eyes meeting for Lorian’s silent tears to escalate into quivering, full-body sobbing.

“ Lorian...oh no…” Gwyndolin’s voice trembled, his pupils blown with an emotion that was no longer want, and his hands moved to rest lightly on the prince’s shoulders. “ Oh, Lorian, what I have I...what did I...I...I was only…”

Lorian knew. Gwyndolin did not have to apologize. The Dark Moon had simply been overwhelmed with love and the desire to just _touch_ , the likes of which neither of them had felt before meeting each other, and Lorian had felt it too...well, before it transformed into something cloying and viscous and made Lorian’s eagerness plummet headlong into a pit of sick.

“ I...I’m sorry…” Lorian’s voice, though garbled, was at least coming through at long last. “ I...I _can’t.”_

“ Lorian…!”

  
  
Lorian couldn’t stand the definition of heartbreak that was Gwyndolin’s expression. What had he _done_ ? Gwyndolin had simply been enjoying himself and showing Lorian just how much he loved him, and Lorian had repaid him by freezing. By growing far too overwhelmed over something he had wanted in the first place. By panicking. By wanting him to stop. Now everything was ruined and Gwyndolin was hurt and why couldn’t Lorian have just _sucked it up like he did for everything else?_

The elder prince had tried, though--oh, how he had _tried!_

It had just been...

“ It was _too much._ ” As usual, Lorian’s propensity for honesty overrode all else, and he had to try to explain himself, even though he was still nauseous and the room was still slightly off-kilter. “ It was...it was _so fast_ , and...and I couldn’t...I was...I was _drowning_ , Gwyndolin, and I...I was dizzy...I couldn’t move...couldn’t find my words...”

Gwyndolin immediately ripped his hands off of Lorian’s shoulders and moved to scramble off of the bed, but Lorian was certain that he would absolutely lose it if Gwyndolin left him alone, so he lurched his upper body forward and gripped blindly at Gwyndolin’s arms, his eyes so drenched with tears that his already fading vision was wavering like a distorted mirror.

“ _Please don’t leave me!_ ” It was one of the most pathetic things Lorian had ever said, but by the gods, he really could not have cared less. “ I’m sorry! Please, _please,_ it won’t happen again! I need you! _Please…!_ ”

Oh, those arms he loved so much were back, wrapping around him and pulling him to rest against Gwyndolin’s chest. Lorian’s panic phased almost immediately into a sense of relief the likes of which he had never before experienced, and he sank bonelessly--aching, exhausted, wrung out, and so full of love and thankfulness--into those arms that were so deceptively strong and so perfectly safe. He shuddered and gasped and wept--quietly, with only the smallest whimpers squeaking through his throat--as those snakes coiled protectively around his body as six separate hugs. It was like being wrapped up in the most effective security blanket there ever was. It anchored him. It grounded him. The fuzz and whirling faded away.

“ Oh, Lorian, protector of mine heart…” Lorian was dimly aware of a wetness that wasn’t his own dripping into his hair and he began to keen even harder out of guilt. “ Unyielding Sword of Lothric, Savior of the Sunless Realms...if I ever hurt thee in such a way again, I bid thee--strike me down without regret or hesitation! It is all that I deserve!”

Lorian shook his head against Gwyndolin’s chest. He was far too ashamed to look up at his lover, even though Gwyndolin’s hand was soothing as it stroked through his hair, and there was not even the slightest hint of anger in the lithe body that cradled him close.

“ No...please...Gwyndolin…” The knight fisted his hands in Gwyndolin’s violet robe. “ I beg you, do not blame yourself, for...for I am the one that should be apologizing, not you.”

There was a sharp intake of breath.

“ Nay, Lorian…” The hand in Lorian’s hair moved to the back of his neck and gripped firmly. “ I am the only one that has the right to apologize in this situation.” Gwyndolin’s heart was fluttering like the wings of a baby bird, and Lorian shifted his head so that his ear was pressed on the left side of the god’s chest, relaxing at the sound of that familiar rhythmic tattoo. “ I was... _overcome_ , in a bizarre moment of weakness that I...that I cannot even explain mineself! I was so focused on touching thee, on just...just being _near_ thee, that I did not notice thy distress until it was almost… _almost_...”

The god’s lungs seemed to jutter in his chest. Another pang of guilt made Lorian’s stomach twist.

“ It wasn’t your fault that I could not speak.” Lorian was relieved that said ability to speak had seemingly returned in full. It would have lessened his point if he’d stuttered and stumbled his way through such dire conversation. “ You are not a telepath, Gwyndolin; how could you possibly expect to hear the cries of a mute man? And I…”

Lorian finally, reluctantly, pulled away to look Gwyndolin in the eyes, and good heavens--if the Nameless Moon was already bloodshot and disheveled, Lorian did not want to know how he himself appeared!

“ I was enjoying it. At first.” A flush began to creep up his neck as he smiled, bashfully, which made Gwyndolin smile weakly in return. “ It was nice. _You_ were nice. But then…”

Lorian’s smile twisted into a worried frown as he tried to piece together exactly what happened--to verbalize something that did not seem to have a definition in the many tongues in which he was fluent. Gwyndolin’s arms pulled back so that he was stroking Lorian’s broad shoulders, though the snakes continued to embrace the knight in their stead, as silent as the grave outside of the occasional miserable hiss.

“...I couldn’t say anything, and I couldn’t push you off. I was just...disoriented. Like I was suffering from a high fever and tipping over the edge of delirium.” Lorian shrugged just as discontentedly as the snakes hissed. “ It...it is not a big deal. It was just an accident.”

“ Lorian.” The sternness of Gwyndolin’s voice made the knight wince, though the thumbs rubbing into the meat of his biceps soon had him relaxing once more. “ If I had not noticed thy distress, I would have...dost thou not realize the gravity of what nearly happened to thee?!”

Lorian blinked bewilderedly at Gwyndolin.

“ What are you talking about?” The elder prince was genuinely, honestly confused, which seemed to throw Gwyndolin off as well. “ You stopped. I could not speak, and I could not move, but you heard me anyway, and you stopped. Another being…” He swallowed thickly. “ Maybe another being would...would not have noticed...would not have _bothered_ to notice...and…”

The bedspread was almost unbearably warm underneath the tops of Lorian’s thighs, but a strange chill seemed to seize him out of nowhere, frosting his bones and making him shiver from something that could only be described as _unpleasant._ Gwyndolin’s hands slipped once more around Lorian’s back, and the knight gratefully allowed himself to melt once more into Gwyndolin’s embrace, allowing his eyes to slip shut as the feeling of _safety_ began to drive out the cold.

“ I needed you to stop...and you did. You stopped.” Despite all that almost happened, Lorian couldn’t keep the sappy and adoring grin off his face, and he quickly shifted so that his mouth was hidden in the embroidered fabric of Gwyndolin’s robe. “ Even though you had every right to keep going...it would have been understandable if you hadn’t noticed, but you did, and...oh, Gwyndolin, I _love you_.”

Lorian meant those words--every single last one of them--and he had expected Gwyndolin to be consoled by them in turn. Yet a cry of anguish seemed to rip itself out of the god’s mouth, and when Lorian pulled away just enough to look at his beloved’s face, he was met with the pale and stricken expression of one that had just seen the vilest of ghosts.

“ Every...every _right?_ ” Gwyndolin’s manicured fingernails dug into the skin of Lorian’s shoulders through his tunic. “ What dost thou mean, that I...thou art...thou art joking, yes?” A hysterical laugh slipped out of the god’s lips like an impulsive secret. “ Lorian, I may...I have never... _lain_ with anyone before, but even though thou art the first one who has ever shared mine bed, I know in every drop of my godly blood that the only _right_ present in that situation is thy right to have _control_ . If thou wishest for me to stop, then I shall stop. It does not _matter_ if thou dost not believe thou hast a good _excuse_ ; I have _no_ right to thy body, and thou hast _no_ obligation to yield to mine whims!”

Lorian’s mouth seemed to fill with cotton. “ Gwyndolin...I…”

“ The only one that has the right to thy body is thineself! No human or...or _god_ is allowed to do anything to thee that thou dost not wish for them to do!” Gwyndolin’s heterochromic eyes flared and flashed with an intensity that took Lorian’s breath away. “ Imagine if little Lothric had said to thee what thou just said to mineself! What wouldst thou say to him?!”

For all that the elder prince had been attempting to downplay the incident for both Gwyndolin’s sake and his own, the image of such a role reversal seemed to spark off a cache of fireworks in Lorian’s mind. Not just because of the horror of such an imagined situation, oh no, but of how suffocatingly and excruciatingly _familiar_ such a conversation would be.

“ Lothric was taught that his body was not his own.” Lorian own words seemed to filter into his ears through a thick blanket of white noise. “ He was a symbol, a savior, a tool, a _science experiment_ ...but not a child. _Never_ a child. Only property.”

“ And what of thee, Lorian?” Gwyndolin, of course, had the habit of asking the one question that Lorian had never wanted to even _consider_ , let alone answer. “ What didst thy father teach thee when thou wast growing up?”

Lorian felt more like vomiting in that one moment than he had in his entire lifetime.

“...that I am a blade.” The knight’s voice, in that one fleeting moment of time, sounded as small as he felt inside. “ A shield. A weapon. My body...my body protects the ones I love, and the innocents of the realm, and that is...that is enough.”

The god shook his head.

“ Nay.” Gwyndolin serpentine eyes brimmed with tears. “ Nay, my darling...that is nowhere near enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...
> 
> Should I apologize? I feel like I should apologize, but really, I'm not very sorry at all.
> 
> PS: This will also expand into a chapter fic as soon as ‘Throw Stars at the Twilight’ is complete. For now, enjoy this 'I'm sorry chapter 8 is coming slowly but I just started a medical residency for fuck's sake' consolation gift.
> 
> PSS: if Gwyndolin and Lorian ending up in a happy relationship, Sulyvahn losing and dying like the pathetic worm he is, and Aldrich getting slaughtered with extreme prejudice are considered spoilers to fans of 'Throw Stars at the Twilight', then you have severely underestimated the kind of writer I am. I'm not going for a 'Game of Thrones' ending here, folks. No 'dramatic tweests' in my fanfiction lobby.


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